As I transcribe this journal written by Sarah in 1943, I want to stay faithful to her writing – even her long, convoluted sentences full of parenthetical phrases. However, because Sarah was writing to her own grown-and-married daughter, she felt free to "tell it like it is" – or was – according to her own memory. A few stories about her neighbors are unflattering. While I have the right to publish info and images from Sarah's scrapbooks and journals, I don't have the right – or desire – to publish anything that could cause hurt or shame among living descendants. After all, without proof, these stories are merely gossip.
Throughout this series of posts, I will indicate omissions with an ellipsis, a series of periods. If you read something about your own ancestor and want the omitted information, please email me so we can discuss it. My email address is under the "About" tab.
And now, on with Sarah's virtual stroll through Carrollton. As always, my own comments are in brackets. All parentheses are Sarah's own.
From 5th Street on, there were no houses on Seminary that I know of until almost 1894 or 5, when the little brick on the corner was built, probably for Pearce Winslow and Maynie (Bond), his wife, for they were living there when Pearce ... left her. Just in passing, isn’t it sad and strange that of the three most prominent families then in the Methodist Church, not a great-grandson of the names survives. Mr. Will Winslow’s son died, so did the child1 Maynie bore Pearce after he left her; Mr. Henry Winslow left a son, Cooper, who never married. Mr. George [and] Mr. Jim left no children — the girls of course, as Aunt Lou, had sons of different family names.
Of the Howes, you know of course, Papa’s son2 died, Uncle Joe’s boys3 had no children, Aunt Sallie’s son4 is a Froman, my children are Salyers5; Uncle John’s baby died, Aunt Lou’s and Uncle Will’s boys6 had no sons. Of the Conns, the daughters had sons of different names, of course, and even in the Rowland family, with three sons, there was not a son born to any – only to one girl in the family, Louise, who married Harry Stringfellow. Looking around at all the multitude of babies I see, I think it isn’t fair somehow that there is not a Howe, a Conn, or a Winslow left of the old families by name among the youngest generation.
 | |
| One house built on 5th Street was the Methodist Church parsonage. It was completed in 1899 at 219 5th St. The first resident was the Reverend J.D. Redd. |
But to go back to geography? topography? — I am going to skip down 4th Street, on which no one lived that I remember except the Thoma family — he was the harness maker, and his wife was so pretty. They had three boys and a girl. I’m not sure they were living in the house they now occupy (Mrs. Thoma). In fact I believe they bought it later, but they lived there in 1903, I know, or about the time Mabel graduated and married Charlie Griffith.
The Schuermans had moved to Carrollton about 1884, almost the time Mama came to live at Grandma Howe’s7 home for a year, when I was little, for Aunt Sallie Howe, as well as several other girls, had quite fallen for Henry, who had a certain rough masculine charm, though a German ruthlessness with his employees (however, he was an impulsive, kindly fellow at heart, good to his family and the best of the three boys). About the time we came to Carrollton, he had won the heart of Ruth Winslow, tho the great opposition of her mother, who however afterwards was devoted to him. Will Schuerman had married Julia Berg, and their first child8 was born late in 1890, I think. Julia had a brother, Bob Berg, but he never made much history except as a hard drinker, like Jim Winslow who was, however, of a far superior intellect and amiability. I suppose the Schuermans lived where Miss Hattie did, but they rebuilt the house several times or fixed it over.
Oh, I forgot! In the brick house where cousin Ruth and Henry [Schuerman] lived afterwards, Mr. James Lowe was living when we went there; he was an Englishman or Canadian, I forget which, but I remember him, a quiet, small, oldish man. His much younger half-sister9 lived down near Grandpa Howe, and I played with the two boys Jim and Charlie, when I was living at Uncle Joe’s.
Now, coming from Seminary to Sycamore on Fourth St., across from the Schuerman house lived the Blessings, a remarkable German family of the most creditable kind (alas, almost extinct, it seems). The Schuermans were German but more well to do and not of a deeply religious or kindly nature like the Blessings, nor as eager for education. The house of this big family was on the same corner of 4th & Sycamore as our house (afterwards) was on 4th & High St. There was Mr. Blessing, who was a butcher and not highly educated himself, and Mrs., who was everything you ever read about a homely, hard working, ambitious-for-her-children immigrant mother. But I imagine she had a background, and certainly she had the drive. Mary (you remember her as Mrs. Told) was one of the first graduates of Carrollton High School –- she and Lena Smith and Lucy Wafford graduated together in exercises held at the 6th St. Schoolhouse in 1890, I believe, or thereabouts; Mr. Weaver was the principal, tho he left and Mr. Melcher came in the year I started to school (the fall of 1890; I may be a trifle off in these dates, but I can verify them later. The three graduation addresses were Mary’s in German, Lena’s in Latin, and Lucy’s in English.
 |
| A portion of Sarah's writing about the Blessing family, who lived at 4th & Sycamore in the 1890s. |
The second son graduated with John Howe11 and went to “State College”12 with Lewis Darling. I imagine he, too, was a Kappa Sig, for Lewis was. His name was Charlie Blessing; he was one of the “Dirty Dozen” with your Uncle Bob Salyers13, cousin John Howe11, Charlie and Oscar Kipping, and Allen Gullion and Frank Grace. Then it seemed the rest were not so outstanding — there were two deaf & dumb children, Lily and Violet (you remember Lilly; she was very smart, worked for years at the store). Both attended the Deaf Mute Institute, and Violet married another boy who went to school there. Clarence and Rose were around my age (Rose a little older), and Clarence was not as smart as the other boys. Rose was bright, but not like Mary. She married a Craft and taught school for years at Hindman. The youngest boy was called Bolivar Buckner [Blessing], or "BBB" by most of the children, and there was another boy, Paul, a little older, rather effeminate, who was quite talented in music (but not a genius) and also, strangely enough, a fine mathematician, quite a wizard at it. He taught it afterwards at school somewhere. But the truth was that after the first four or five children came, they shouldn’t have had the others, for they had neither the health themselves or money for the education of the last ones. Buckner just ran wild, tho I believe he afterwards did very well when his brother George took him after the death of his parents.
Right across the street from the Blessings lived the Linnishes. He had only one leg, had lost his other I think in one of the wars in Germany. His daughter Lizzie (who married Clem Roche — they pronounced it Rick!). Come to think of it, they were probably Irish, tho her mother was German, I’m sure. All of them were Catholic, but the Blessings were Lutherans, I imagine. Anyway, with the Stamlers and other non-Catholic Germans they formed the backbone of the Presbyterian Church there at Carrollton. Lizzie was a very pretty girl, we could see them across from our house, as our hill-gardens touched at the bottom. Across from them on the fourth corner of 4th & Sycamore lived the Kreutzers. Mr. K was a protestant, I think, his wife was Catholic and raised the girls that way. One of his daughters married Bud Horan’s uncle, Jim, the handsomest Irishman who was ever
A queer combination made up the people who lived on the left on Sycamore (as you went down 4th to High). In a tiny frame cottage lived old Mrs. Rhodenbach, an aunt, I believe, of Mrs. Glauber, Bertha’s mother (those early Catholic families are hard to untangle as to relationship). She had a daughter who married an Irishman named Donnelly and had the boy I mentioned, Eddie, and two daughters, Maggie, who lived with us when Leonora was born (Mrs. Weismiller next to Miss Rose’s, you remember) and Katie, who married Ernest Lawrence.
Next to her lived Ben Myers, who was a bricklayer, and his wife and a pretty niece, Grace Covington. I’m trying to think whom she married. Next lived the Schonlows.15 ...
Next to the Schonlows (a step down an alley, but almost on the same street) lived the Washingtons, of color, with a whole family of children. These two houses were back of the church. On summer evenings we could sit in our back yard (at 4th & High) and see the Washingtons disporting themselves in their back yard, with enough distance to make it a lovely picture of the old south and Stephen Foster.16 The littlest girl, Mesie, was a perfect little “topsy.” The old grandmother, a good old woman, who lived with them, fell down the steep back steps and broke her neck, but we weren’t looking over at the time. Alec was the name of the father. I’m hazy about the other side of the street of that square.
Of course, no one lived on 4th St. between Sycamore and High St. because those wonderful gardens stretched down from the houses on each street corner to a little stream which ran through a kind of culvert at the very depth of the little valley where the line fence ran. (When the “backwaters” came up, this filled out into a sizable stream.) And by the way, before leaving this part of town I find I didn’t mention the youngest Schonlow girl, Elizabeth, who married Ed Hill, the dairyman, and died with her second child, I believe. She was a very nice girl, too. His first wife was Laura Glauber, and of her family I will tell when we get to upper Sixth St. beyond Seminary, and there we might as well go after slipping out Fifth Street from High, first (and now we are getting down into where I lived).
Leaving the Winslow and Donaldson homes to be described with High Street, Aunt Lou and Uncle Will6 lived at the same house then that Aunt Lou has lived in all her married life, but of course the place where the parsonage and the Robertson house and the one next to it are now was just their side yard and pasture, where we played many a happy hour. I don’t know who lived in the gray brick across the street, but the Goslees moved in there about 1891 (but when I first went to Mildred’s house, they were living on Main Street).
************** To Be Continued **************
Endnotes:
1The first child, as far as I know, was unnamed and died shortly after birth. The second child, William Beverly Winslow, died in 1907 at age 6. Several Winslow families gave their children the name William Beverly, honoring the ancestor of that name who lived in Carrollton from 1814 to 1883. The mention of "Aunt Lou" refers to daughter Louisiana Winslow (1852-1944),who married Sarah's uncle William Ficklin Howe (1846-1916).
2Chandler Howe, Sarah's brother, who died 10 Nov 1889 at age 19 months.
3James Goslee Howe and George Thompson Howe, sons of Joseph B. and Sallie Goslee Howe
4Robert Hiram Froman, b. about 1885 to Sarah Varena Howe and Hiram M. Froman
5Sarah married William Levi Salyers on 14 Dec 1905
6Sarah's paternal uncle William Ficklin Howe and wife Louisiana "Lou" Winslow Howe had two sons, Winslow B. Howe and John Junior Howe.
7Reference to Alice Ada Cost Howe, who was Sarah's mother and her children's grandmother.
8Henry Burg Schuerman, born 17 Feb 1889
9Sarah later corrects this relationship to step-daughter.
10Howe’s Department Store was owned and operated by Sarah’s grandfather, father, and uncles. 11John Junior Howe (1879-1939), son of Sarah's uncle William Ficklin Howe
12University of Kentucky, Lexington
13Robert King Salyers, Sarah's father's brother, who died while in his teens
14Possibly Grobmeyer; Sarah wrote one, then wrote the other over it.
15Sarah wrote that this family had several sons and three daughters, but she named only Rudy, Annie, Mamie [or Marnie?], and Elizabeth.
16This paragraph reveals attitudes of that time period. We can't change history.
No comments:
Post a Comment